ucotopia design miscellaneous

Flyer Goodness: Animated Gif Flyers by Parra (Amsterdam)

2012-03-08T04:43:00.001-08:00

Flyer Goodness: Animated Gif Flyers by Parra (Amsterdam):

Dutch artist Parra has established for himself a unique look in multiple aesthetic realms, including color palette, illustration and typography style. Working out of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Parra is also the cofounder of Rockwell Clothing and also does a lot of design work for the label.

Day 1 - new hobby

2012-02-22T00:54:00.001-08:00

Loving it already - concentration

That's so true

2012-02-20T01:14:00.001-08:00

Have you tried 'secret ingredient' special fried rice??? Called 'omu rice'

Wordpress

2012-02-20T01:12:00.001-08:00

Tweaking on the Wordpress

My new toys

2012-02-17T04:01:00.001-08:00

My new hobby to take it to next level!! Stay tune my arty side to pop out!! Yet this is how I gonna spend my weekend

Cadbury Dairy Milk Bubbly

2012-02-16T05:39:00.000-08:00

5 minutes with Graham Fink, M&C Saatchi - Creativepool

2012-02-16T04:52:00.000-08:00

How did you get started in the industry?
Seems a long time ago now... Back in the good old 80's I applied for a job at CDP, which was the most creative agency in the world at the time, famous for many great campaigns. Anyway I turned up with my writing partner Steve Limbrick. They told us we had a good book, but they also had a policy of not taking on younger/junior teams.

They also told us that they were currently looking, but for someone much more senior and wished us the best of luck. We returned the next day dressed up as old men! I had dyed my hair white overnight with a bottle of bleach and had make-up with wrinkles and bags under our eyes. We had gold watches and a walking stick each. We walked in and said we wanted that job for a senior team - they hired us.

young an stupid??

Valentine Love

2012-02-15T02:09:00.001-08:00

Always nice to have a flowers on valentines day - full of love at the wedding

Put some effort

2012-02-13T09:57:00.001-08:00

Turning the normal instant noodle into proper noodle! With just a little bit of effort

Beautiful flowers from Colombia road

2012-02-13T09:55:00.001-08:00

Nice Sunday morning, fallin in love with these flowers

More work from Jake Dyson Product

2012-02-11T02:13:00.001-08:00

Walkers mister opus crisps

2012-02-08T02:01:00.001-08:00

Bento

2012-02-05T02:49:00.001-08:00

Always love the look (taste) of Bento

Great attention to detail service

Beautiful at satsuma

Snow snow snow

2012-02-05T02:46:00.001-08:00

Is that just me get so excited about snow?

Love the feel on the fresh snow

Nopi

2012-02-05T02:45:00.001-08:00

Beautiful restaurant

NOPI

Cheesecake to start
Along with sage martini
OX tongue
Baby octopus
Lamb
Scallop
Prawn

Lovely

Couldn't fit the dessert
Next time

Suda

2012-02-03T07:47:00.001-08:00

New restaurant - SUDA at st martins court yard

WD Elements Portable HDD

2012-02-01T07:22:00.001-08:00

How simple n small for 1TB HDD no power cable needed

N digital

2012-02-01T07:21:00.001-08:00

And now analogue to digital

Pen or pencil?

2012-01-31T09:56:00.001-08:00

Staying away from mac this week

http://www.lyst.com/ - Cool Fashion Search Engine

2012-01-30T06:21:00.001-08:00

Interesting / cool way of searching for fashion

tweeter function involve

Looking after my desk

2012-01-27T10:11:00.001-08:00

Creative Review - A new identity for More4

2012-01-26T04:57:00.000-08:00

Creative Review - A new identity for More4

While the new graphic device is clearly an attempt to use something that has a bit more activity to it, the sense of movement is translated in a series of live action idents designed and directed by ManvsMachine in collaboration with art installation designers, Jason Bruges Studio, and students from Middlesex University.

Each one is made up of hundreds of mechanical 'flipper' units that, when set in motion, reveal a range of colours and patterns. These structures are placed within a series of different environments, such as a cafe, a staircase, on a tree, and on an abandoned boat on a beach in Dungeness.

"The new idents are definitely born from the new mark," says Wood. "We knew we want to create live action idents, initially ideas were too convoluted or grandiose, but as ManvsMachine developed how the logo would animate it inspired them to think about taking elements and breaking them out into the real world. After that, creatively, things pretty quickly came to the point at where the idents are now.

"However, the realities of designing, manufacturing, installing and transporting 400 flipper units was a challenge, but all those variables, the extra input and expertise we gained along the way, means we've ended up with something that is incredibly visually satisfying, is unpretentious, and has warmth and charm."

According to ManvsMachine's James Greenfield the flexible logo "morphs through a series of flips, folds and reveals [and so] the colour palette reflects the vibrant nature of interiors, food culture, fashion and other contemporary lifestyle programming." The typeface used is More4 Omne, a version of Darden Studio's Omnes Pro.

"A lot of More4's programming is about making things," Wood adds, "so we in turn wanted to physically build these idents, construct them and film them in real locations, rather than computer generating all the magic in post-production. I think the installations we eventually came up with subtly reinforce the new look but offer a satisfying spontaneity which, I hope, will make them continually watchable ."

Pierre Hermes macaroons

2012-01-26T01:35:00.001-08:00

Love it so colourful n tasty

http://www.pierreherme.com/

Mock Up

2012-01-26T01:30:00.001-08:00

Getting some mock up done - always always loves making mock up. Do much better than just seeing it on screen 2D

Working in Progress - new website for Valentine Music

2012-01-25T05:48:00.000-08:00

Concept Vending Machine With See-through Display #DigInfo

2012-01-25T05:41:00.000-08:00

How LO can you GO? from i love logo website

2012-01-25T03:42:00.001-08:00

How LO can you GO?

The following guest post was written by Tom and Phil of London-based Mat Dolphin.

One of the services we offer as a design agency is logo design. No surprises then when we recently stumbled upon another agency offering the same service. So far, so average – the majority of graphic design agencies throughout the world do exactly the same. The difference with this one, however, was the costing of their work.

$42. That simple. For $42 you can get a logo designed with two rounds of amends and a number of different files formats sent to you. Sceptical of the quality of the work and a little surprised at the pricing structure and business model, we shared the find withour loyal Twitter following in our usual measured and level-headed style…

In short, the ever opinionated ‘design community’ weren’t too happy about the idea of logos being punted out like Happy Meals. The general consensus was that the time it takes to research, brainstorm, design, develop, artwork and subsequently amend a logo of a relatively decent standard could not be sufficiently covered by such a small cost. This got us thinking. We decided to conduct an experiment. Googling ‘cheap logos’ gave us plenty of options for ‘quality logo design services for a fixed low cost’ so we pulled on our fictional overalls and got in touch with a company offering said service to enquire on behalf of our newly-imagined company – ‘Dolphin Plumbing Services’.

Commissioning a cheap logo simply to sneer about how we reckon we could have done a better job would be too easy and not achieve a huge amount. Instead, we wanted to approach the company as if we had no experience or interest in graphic design and see what the process is like for the ‘average punter’. Also, how the experience differs from the service we offer. We made a point of letting them lead us and not getting all ‘designer-y’ with them. This wasn’t an opportunity to lecture them about kerning, for this experiment we didn’t care about the quality of design, we simply wanted to explore the process of purchasing a logo to stick on the side of our non-existent van.

The first company we contacted offered, among plenty of other things, bespoke logo designs and unlimited revisions (which we thought was rather excessive) for only £8.99+VAT. Bargain! It seemed too good to be true and, drum roll… it was – they are yet to return our emails. Not a good start.

Undeterred, we found another company offering a similar service. Yet again, they offered unlimited revisions, so we thought we’d give them a fair amount of feedback to deal with, nothing too unreasonable, just enough to get our money’s worth. They also promised a 1-3 day turnaround for all artwork and amends, so we decided to hold them to that and chase them if they were late. Dolphin Plumbing Services – firm but fair. They were slightly more pricey at £25 but we thought it was worth it in the name of investigative journalism, so we sent the email.

The very same day, we received a response asking for payment! If nothing else, they were quick, and at least they’d replied. We eagerly handed-over our bank details (without any guarantees, to the random internet company we’d never heard of two hours previously) and waited to see what happened next.

Less than an hour later, we received an email granting us access to our own personal account. We were told to wait for 48 hours before receiving the initial designs. So far the process hadn’t been too painful, we’d done our bit and the real work was now down to their designers. All that was left to do was wait…

Two days later, an email with the subject ‘Your first design samples’ was sitting our inbox – the experiment had started to get interesting. We logged into the account and saw these six designs (below) awaiting our feedback.

The quality of the logos is something we’re going to comment on later, but regardless of how good the initial designs are, we have a starting point. Regarding the first of our unlimited revisions, we wanted to ensure what we were requesting was reasonable and similar to the kind of feedback the company would usually get. We weren’t interested in testing their patience for the sake of it. Our first round of feedback was as follows:

Once again, we sat tight, staring at our inbox waiting for what could potentially become the brand new Dolphin Plumbing Services logo. Can you feel the tension building? This time we only had to wait one day! Another email arrived letting us know that all we had to do was log into our account and we would find the latest logo designs waiting for us — we did, and they were!

This time around our feedback was pretty simple:

This didn’t prove too much of a test for our new design slaves, who responded with the changes, yet again, in just one day. Here’s what they came back with.

We were getting to the point where the discussions had gone far enough to get a reasonable idea of the process and it was time for us to wrap this baby up. We issued one final round of feedback, for good measure:

Which resulted in the following. Ladies and gentlemen, allow us to proudly present, the logo for the finest fictitious plumbing outfit since Super Mario Brothers – Dolphin Plumbing Services:

—

Job done.

The feedback about the colour of the circle had been completely ignored but we pretended not to notice and responded with a grateful approval and requested the logo as high resolution JPGs, PDFs and vector EPS / AI files. These were promptly sent the next day. One techy point to make – the vector logos hadn’t been outlined and there were no fonts accompanying the files. This means that if we did in fact have a van or signage in need of vinyl lettering, we’d be a bit stuck. We would guess the vast majority of customers using these services wouldn’t have the knowledge or inclination to specifically request fonts, let alone own the software to discover they were missing. It seems like the company we used fell at the last hurdle somewhat but perhaps the rush to complete the job and move onto the next artwork carried out at light-speed is to blame for the oversight.

Anyway, the experiment had concluded, now for the analysis.

The easiest thing here would be to tear the design work apart and criticise how it simply wasn’t very good. It wasn’t. But it seems as if that would be over simplifying the point. We paid an incredibly small amount for what must’ve taken somebody, somewhere, a reasonable amount of time to do. Even a competent designer bashing out the work as quickly as possible would’ve had to spend a while producing six logos with three sets of revisions. There’s also the time it takes to read our emails, save the amended files, upload them to our account and let us know they’re there. It’s impossible to say how long that would’ve taken (and we’re under no illusion that the lovely emails we received were personally written to us) but was this time and labour all covered by our measly £25?

As designers, our time, creativity, experience and technical skills are the only things we’re actually selling. And we’re not surprised that how anyone with the right software can do what we do and sell it for a fraction of the cost proves irritating and perhaps even insulting to the majority of designers. But does the plumber who simply wants something to stick on a business card really care when he can get the job done for such a small amount of money? The process we went through was quick, easy and required very little hassle on our part. Once we found a company who actually responded to us, all we had to do was pay, look at designs and tell them what we wanted them to change. Assuming the role of someone with limited knowledge and opinions on typography, layout and colour, the service offered to us was more than agreeable for what we paid.

However, there is still the angry mob of designers to deal with. First off, it’s worth thinking about what they’re actually angry about. We don’t think it’s because their cover’s been blown and they can no longer charge huge amounts of cash for knocking up a quick logo. The issue, in our opinion, is more the fact that taking shortcuts that allow the work to be produced for a sum as small as £25 both creates work of a lower quality and lowers the value of what we do in the eyes of those outside of the design industry.

Like many other products and services, it’s never going to be too hard to find a cheaper option. But, as the painfully obvious saying goes, you get what you pay for. Buy a cheap car, it’ll break down more often. Buy a cheap meal, it won’t taste very nice. Buy a cheap haircut… you get the idea. If Phil the plumber decides to go for the £25 logo purely based on cost, his service simply won’t look premium. Maybe this won’t be a problem as many of his customers aren’t going to care too much about the typography when their kitchen is flooding, but design matters, and we’re sure we’ve all instantly disregarded companies based solely on the look of their logo, website or shop-frontage. It’s similar to pizza menus on your doormat – you’re not going to pay much but you know it won’t be fine-dining.

Maybe he doesn’t want his service to look premium. He’s a down-to-earth guy making an honest living for a fair price and he wants his logo to reflect that. Fair enough. But at no point throughout the process were we asked any questions about this. It was far too easy to let the designers get on with designing what they thought was right for a company they knew next-to-nothing about. Without this knowledge, can you really create something of any value, or are you simply choosing random fonts and adding clichéd clipart images based on the name of the company?

So, the design is never to going be considered at any great length – because there simply isn’t the time to do so – and there’s a good chance the final design may not be appropriate for its purpose.

The end result? Cheap design that looks cheap and is less effective.

But is there a place in the industry for logo design being sold in this way? Unfortunately, we think the answer is yes. People or companies who aren’t particularly interested in the way they present themselves can’t be blamed for spending as little money as possible on a service they don’t see value in. Is it damaging to the industry as a whole? Again, I’m afraid the answer is yes. Poor design can never be a good thing, for obvious reasons.

So what happens now? Do we rise up and fight back against these companies? Do we boycott? Do we drop our prices to £20 a logo, no questions asked? Feel free, but we won’t be joining you. A far better defence is to produce well-considered, fairly-priced design that includes the client in the process, asks the right questions, challenges the brief, considers the problem from the clients perspective and provides an effective solution. This, done well, is the only thing that can differentiate what we do from the ‘lowest price gets the job’ outfits.

The conclusion of our experiment? You get what you pay for. The important thing to remember is to make your service good value, regardless of how much it costs.

Tom and Phil
Mat Dolphin
@MatDolphin

Working in progress - new album cover

2012-01-24T08:16:00.000-08:00

New Album Cover Design Im working on at the moment

- First Step after brain storming (loving Spider Diamgram) and scribbles

see how it will progress

loving hand drawing - staying away from computer is fun!

More from Japan

2012-01-23T09:55:00.003-08:00

Sishi train

2012-01-23T09:55:00.001-08:00

Book of the week

2012-01-23T03:41:00.000-08:00

Book of the week
Bruno Munari - Da Costa Nasce Cosa

New Work from me- www.ucotopia.com

2012-01-23T03:11:00.001-08:00

Uploaded new work from www.ucotopia.com - check on Jake Dyson Products, Adelphoi Chtistmas, Adelphoi Music and Soundmouse.

Some inspiration

2012-01-22T06:14:00.001-08:00

Beautiful things inspires me - brilliant colours

Ha nice one

2012-01-20T08:40:00.001-08:00

http://flyergoodness.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-12-07T09:29:00-08:00&max-results=5

Simplicty - Paper for Packaging

2012-01-19T09:28:00.001-08:00

Ten years before the rise of the supermarket generic brand, Champion Papers produced these colorful packaging designs for a series of print advertisements.

This particular one appeared in a 1968 issue of CA Magazine (part of the Henry Wolf Collection), but was part of a long series promoting the Imagination line of papers, which was produced under the creative direction of James Miho. No explicit credit is given for the graphics here, but in this fecund period he worked with George Tscherny, Milton Glaser, Henry Wolf and others on elaborate promotional brochures, which won numerous awards in the industry.

In 1977, Jewel Companies would produce a line of products with plain white packaging, a simple stripe, and sans-serif type describing the contents. Soon every grocery store on the planet would stock some variation on this concept (Milton Glaser did one version for the Grand Union chain). The effect was memorably spoofed in Alan Cox’s Repo Man (1984), which used only generics. In one scene, Emilio Esteves enjoys a can of FOOD—MEATFLAVORED.

From http://containerlist.glaserarchives.org/index.php?id=79#body

Lovely puffed up packaging from Japan

2012-01-19T04:01:00.001-08:00

Always amazed by perfection n attention to details packaging design from Japan, such an inspiration

Some of my old work

2012-01-19T03:45:00.000-08:00

It is always nice to look but how i progress my way of thinking...designing....

to see how I shape my design and myself now.

01. Sneaky Egg

Typeface created by making holes on the surface of eggs as a 2D and boiling them (3D)

02. English Wine

03. Tea Room

The take-away tea cup was designed to battle the identity crisis of 'tea-bag Britain' by reintroducing the practice of drinking better quality loose leaf tea.

04. Experimental Christmas Card

Instead of showing christmas through images, these christmas cards uses christmas sense to send seasonal greeting which brings warm and bright moment in dark and cold season.

more work please visit www.ucotopia.com

Flyer Goodness: Art With Abstract Geometry: Posters and Art Prints...

2012-01-19T03:33:00.000-08:00

Flyer Goodness: Art With Abstract Geometry: Posters and Art Prints...: ...

Love this simplicity and tactileness

Design industry predictions for 2012 - Part one | News | Design Week

2012-01-10T06:29:00.000-08:00

Design industry predictions for 2012 - Part one | News | Design Week

Paul-Rand.com :: Biography

2011-11-02T10:23:00.000-07:00

Paul-Rand.com :: Biography

Amon Tobin ISAM Live London 2011

2011-11-01T10:01:00.000-07:00

SBTRKT - Sanctuary

2011-11-01T09:56:00.000-07:00

Nice classic poster

2011-11-01T09:51:00.001-07:00

Think Different

2011-11-01T08:40:00.000-07:00

Canal+ "The Bear" by BETC Paris

2011-10-26T03:11:00.000-07:00

He is sensitive..... I don't give a shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!!!!

Light Color Design: CSYS LED Task Light

2011-10-05T06:13:00.000-07:00

Light Color Design: CSYS LED Task Light: Source: jakedyson.com via Kelly on Pinterest One of the new products I saw at Designjunction was the CSYS LED Task Light that...

Bing | Decode Jay-Z Case Study

2011-10-03T09:10:00.000-07:00

Coca-Cola Happiness Machine

2011-10-03T09:07:00.000-07:00

Mets de la crème

2011-10-03T07:28:00.000-07:00

Mets de la crème

M&S lovely packaging

2011-09-21T05:52:00.001-07:00

Just bought these lovely tea bags from M&S - driven by look of the packaging- didn't even need to buy teas

re-blogging again

2011-09-21T04:56:00.001-07:00

I'm starting my design blog again today- to keep updating with my collection of lovely things, pictures, film, food, words etc I see day to day